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Old Ford Granada stars in comedy 'The World's End'

05:00 AM, Aug 25, 2013

This old Ford Granada plays a prominent role in the film 'The World's End'
Laurie Sparham/

Written Byby Bryan Alexander, USA TODAY

A new British comedy hitting theaters this weekend, the World’s End, might take place in 12 pubs during an epic, even world-ending pub crawl. But the real star may be star Simon Pegg’s terrible, yet awesome car.

Gary King, a 40-something loser played by Pegg, screeches up to pick up his former school pals in a battered British Ford Granada known in the movie as “the beast.” (The European Granada sedan, a U.K. icon and sold there by Ford Europe from 1972 to 1994, is unrelated to Ford’s late 1970s car by the same name in the U.S.)

He is still rocking the tape player which has a mix of his favorite 1980s songs. It says everything about King, who has never really left his ’80s glory days even though they have definitely left him.

“The box design is so of that period,” says director Edgar Wright, who insisted on the car. “It’s one of those cars where if you were a young man you would buy a second-hand Granada. But Gary King is still driving it.”

Wright says he insisted that the car be painted a terrible matte black.

“I said to the art department you have got to make it like Gary painted it himself with matte paint and like four coats. And it’s like he has had accidents and painted over it with more matte black,” says Edgar. “They did a great job with it.”

It all sounds very autobiographical for the director of Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz — two other classic collaborations with Pegg and Frost.

But Wright says he never owned a Granada.

“I used to drive a Vauxhall Chevette,” the English director admits. “That’s an equally (terrible) car. I have never owned a car since.”